About two hours after Myers dropped puck in the ceremonial opening faceoff between Crosby and Mats Sundin, Sid The Kid drove the final dagger into Austin Powers’ beloved blue-and-white by tapping home a loose puck for the winning goal in a wild 6-4 Penguins victory.

Gary Bettman, who spent the lockout trying to break the NHLPA (and would have succeeded if not for the efforts of people such as Chris Chelios, Trent Klatt, Steve Larmer and Eric Lindros), recently went on the record insisting he believes in and welcomes a strong union across from him at the table.

Well, the commissioner is going to get what he wished for, because once Paul Kelly, the former assistant U.S. Attorney for the District of Massachusetts, becomes NHLPA executive director, that’s exactly what the union will again become.

A pregame power outage delayed the start of the Sharks home opener Saturday night by about 20 minutes.

Players were warming up on the ice when the arena bowl went totally dark about 7:05 p.m. Five seconds later, the HP Pavilion generators kicked in and there was enough light for the players to continue skating, but limited power elsewhere in the building.

Fans weren’t able to enter the building for a short period and the parking lot was also dark.

As efforts were being made to restore the power, Sharks General Manager Doug Wilson and Bruins General Manager Peter Chiarelli huddled to determine the best way to begin the game once conditions were ready.

Warning: Once you’ve read this and studied all the numbers, the rest of the NHL’s regular season will be a mere formality. The Stanley Cup playoffs, too, for that matter.

The Portzline Evaluation Formula was dreamed up nearly three years ago in the hallucinating cold of Edmonton and fine-tuned this summer in Toronto with the help of a sudsy friend named Alexander Keith.

It is a gloriously subjective and simple way to evaluate each of the 30 NHL teams and, thus, predict how the 2007-08 season will play out.

We’re publishing it now (yes, it’s copyrighted) so we can say ‘We told you so’ next June … when the Detroit Red Wings beat the Ottawa Senators in the Stanley Cup Finals.

“Back With a Vengeance,” was the message emblazoned on the pumpkin-colored T-shirts handed out to the customers for the home opener last night. It is a nice sentiment, a promise that the foolishness of a year ago won’t be tolerated again - at least not mildly. Coming just three days after Jesse Boulerice broke his stick on an opponent’s jaw, maybe the timing was a little off, but what can you do? “Back With a Cross-Check and a 25-Game Suspension” wouldn’t fit on the shirt.

These aren’t the Broad Street Bullies, regardless of the shelf time for Boulerice or the 20-gamer earned by Steve Downie in the exhibition season, and they aren’t the Philadelphia Ballet yet, either. The franchise is stuck somewhere in between, searching for an identity, and trying to skate the fine blue line that separates being tough and being stupid.

In the world of Xavier Louis Reed, a collarbone fracture is nothing. Same goes for the 800 miles he travels each weekend for hockey practice, the equipment he has to lug, the time away from his mom and dad and the social life he’ll miss because of his breakneck schedule.

Such are the sacrifices of a 14-year-old, 6-foot-2-inch athlete with world-class potential. Reed, a freshman at Bishop O’Dowd High School in Oakland, is one of the best American hockey players in his age group. He played two seasons for the San Jose Junior Sharks, won a place on the West Coast Selects at 12 and this year joined the Los Angeles Hockey Club, a top-ranked Tier 1 AAA team, as defenseman.

Each year there are dozens, maybe hundreds of young guys with serious prospects for a National Hockey League career. Unlike Louie, as he is called by his family, nearly all of them are white. With 30 NHL teams and roughly 24 players on each team, black players make up 1 to 2 percent of the league.

continued… (*a great, in-depth article about a promising young African-American player and his journey to making the NHL)

One of the unique spoils of winning the NHL’s Stanley Cup is that each player on the championship team gets to take the trophy anywhere he wants. [...]

This summer, Los Angeles Times photographer Robert Gauthier traveled across the U.S. and to Sweden, Finland and Canada with the Ducks players to document the cup’s journey. As a lifelong hockey player, the shot of fan-favorite Teemu Selanne hoisting the cup before a Helsinki crowd of 10,000 made me misty-eyed.

The NHL Players Association has narrowed its search for a new executive director down to three finalists: former U.S. attorney Paul Kelly, NFL Players Association lawyer Richard Berthelsen, and Bill Gregson, president and chief executive of sports store chain Forzani Group.

It’s expected that the union will hold a conference call on Monday. During the call, a five-player search committee will recommend the union hire Kelly, who, as a prosecutor, spearheaded the investigation of union founder Alan Eagleson.

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